The DNC’s Unconvincing Gen-Z Circus

C hicago’s hottest club this week was the Democratic National Convention, where Gen-Z TikTokers, Olivia Rodrigo stans (like fans, only more obsessive), and social-media influencers gathered to support presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Nearly 200 stars were in the United Center’s “Creator Lounge” this week, a zone with an open bar and string lights, reserved exclusively for influencers.

“Hotties for Harris,” a warehouse party thrown at the DNC by and for certified Brats, was the Gen-Z hot zone. In one corner sat a musty couch with a “Property of J.D. Vance” sign lying on top of it, a reference to the (very) false claim that Vance had sex with a couch, circulated online by Democrats after Donald Trump announced his vice-presidential pick. There was merchandise galore at the event, including “Hotties for Harris” bucket hats and tank tops and free condoms that read “F*** Project 2025.” GIFs of Kamala Harris dancing were projected, signs that read “Tim Waltz [sic] Got Me Laid” were hung, TikTok dances were danced, and feminist mini-golf was played. A gumball machine distributing the morning-after pill read “Plan B, nom nom nom.”

Although Democrats won’t “win on vibes alone,” Natalie Fall, the executive director of pioneering Democratic youth organization March For Our Lives, told USA Today, if it was a vibes-based election, they’d “have a good chance.” But since vibes can carry one only so far, the DNC’s influencer strategy centered on speaking to young voters directly — having “those important conversations with youth voters,” Fall said. Many creators engaged in this mission. Sari Beth Rosenberg, a history teacher, was just one. Previewing her DNC coverage earlier this week, Rosenberg filmed an Instagram video while lying in her hotel room bed, “resting.”

“I’m resting because I’m here for the DNC this week — the Democratic National Convention,” she told her 35,000 followers. “I was one of the 200 creators picked by the DNC to cover the convention. What’s my strategy? I want to show you the convention in a way that you wouldn’t see from traditional media. Think of me as your friend, showing you what it’s like. My strategy? I wanna cover caucus meetings, I wanna interview delegates, I wanna show you all how democracy really works, in action.”

Rosenberg’s next update was a video of her doing push-ups in the streets of Chicago, “getting in [her] last workout” before the “real workout of the week begins: Covering the DNC.” She then “pulled up” at Wrigley Field for “indogcision,” an event put on by a local dog shelter and HeadCount at which people could register to vote. When she was interviewing a dog about why people should register, the dog bit her microphone, which obviously meant, “You’d better make sure you’re registered to vote, and if you’re not, register.”

Democratic hotness is pretty exclusive. Doug Emhoff is hot, for example, because he’s a supportive husband and bra-burning feminist. Tim Walz is hot, they say, because he was a faculty adviser for his high school’s gay-straight alliance 25 years ago. J. D. Vance, however, is hot’s antithesis: weird, because he wants to outlaw sex, influencers said, and take away women’s rights (those kinds of men are “not demure, not very mindful,” another pop-culture reference to the current obsession with the word “demure”). Being a hottie for Harris specifically means that you are “having fun, we’re dancing, we’re listening to fun music, we’re partying, we’re having a good time. We’re having conversations about reproductive health care and what it means to have freedom in every aspect of our lives,” Mariana Pecora, spokeswoman for Voters of Tomorrow, said. Hot people at the DNC also got to play arcade games, like “whack a weird policy,” and “abortion access skeetball,” the Daily Mail reported.

The fun also seemed exclusive. Although the general strategy of deploying influencers may be useful to campaigns (Republicans also invited about 70 to the Republican National Convention), the absurd and hyper-online pop-culture references at the DNC didn’t seem to translate well to outsiders. When Kamala Harris’s “vibes” campaign was less official, it was more accessible. Early references to Harris as “Brat” or Doug as “hot” were organic; they weren’t, or did not seem to be, planted by Democratic operatives. This week’s DNC “vibes” campaign reeked of desperation and of a Democratic Party too willing to fit in with the kids — like Regina George’s mom in Mean Girls, who said famously, dressed in a pink velour sweatsuit, “I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Friday that Kamala Harris’s DNC was a Chicago circus, not a serious place to discuss a candidate or a policy. That description seems most fitting, especially because the thrill of a circus is supposed to be seeing the impossible made possible in person. Excitement was palpable for the influencers guzzling coconut cocktails — they were “in” on the vibes. Outsiders didn’t feel the same.

The biggest difference between a journalist and an influencer (presumably) is the center of attention; in most influencer videos from the convention, the poster was the subject, and the DNC the background character. This crop of social-media stars was the first-ever group of credentialed influencers invited to cover the DNC, and journalists apparently bemoaned that influencers had greater access than the credentialed press did. But the influencer persona requires one to be almost exclusively into oneself — which didn’t make for great interviews, jokes, or commentary. Influencers would rather discuss their roles at the DNC than Kamala Harris’s; influencers would rather see their faces on a screen than a politician’s.

A large celebration erupted on the creator stage during the DNC’s final evening. Videos of the moment from the stage paint a pretty scene: elated smiles, people jumping around in a sea of red, white, and blue balloons. The vibes seem strong. Pan out, and it’s a completely different picture: a bunch of kids glued to their phones, standing around pretending to live in the moment, making substance-less remarks like “Oh my God” and “This is crazy.” Does anyone believe that fun to be contagious?